It Rains Blood

He had left his home, his mother, and his sister for a better life, a fulfilling life. He left with his brother; shorter, darker, smarter than he was. To him, there was nothing more important than to see his family sit on a throne in the upper echelons of society and look down on those who looked down on them. 

He was far from that dream. He lived in a crappy building full of crackhead tenants and society rejects. It was a brown three-story building with wiring cables all over the exterior waiting to be destroyed before being fixed, because the landlord wanted the insurance money. It was hell in these parts of Bay City. Half the streets did not have lights; those that did were usually using neon light strips over the building, giving the streets an orange feel. But it wasn't warm at all. 

This part of the city was called moisissure noire. 

Most of the people that lived in this part of the city were hard labor workers: coal miners, janitors, cleaners, and the lot. Daniel J. Valen was no different. He and his brother, Joseph K. Valen, worked in the Sud Mines. These were owned by the Romix Fund but controlled by the local gangs in the area. 

Daniel would wake up around 3:30 am to get a feel of the morning. It was usually really cold; the air was dry and grainy. Windows would be full of dust, and the sunrise looked agonizing. Daniel would stand at the window of their small, self-contained room looking at the sunrise for thirty minutes. His mind wandered, sometimes to a particular point and sometimes to nothing at all. He would prepare coffee for himself and his brother around this time because everyone on the floor shared the same kettle. In fact, that was the reason why he woke up so early in the morning, because they shared everything. 

The walls were green and thin as paper. The hallway was dimly lit by bulbs older than the very building they lived in; hanging from the ceiling leading to the bathroom. The hallway smelled of piss and feces because the bathroom door would not close. Unfortunately, said bathroom was right beside the kitchen, which did not have a door at all. 

By 5am, Daniel would have woken Joseph up, and by 6am, they would have left for the mines. 

The Sud Mines operated on night and day shifts, running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the year. Daniel worked in Mine A. The tunnel was dark and not lit at all, their only sources of light being the torches on their helmets and the lights from the buds of their cigarettes. The cigarettes particularly worried Daniel a lot, as he was not a smoker. It was a small and tight tunnel, with the carriage tracks being your only sense of direction between the entry and the end of the tunnel. Though this isn't a rarity, the mines were built in such a way that once a worker got in, they could not go out the same way unless through the exit, where they would clock out. 

Joseph worked in Mine B which was similar to Mine A but stretched far longer as it was the oldest. It was also the mine where they used the least amount of explosives which was good for Joseph due to his bad lung capacity.

This is what the brothers did on a daily basis for the last two years. A week later.. 

An explosive blew up by accident which meant no work for the week, for the brothers. Daniel sat outside their building on the benches reading a paper from a week ago. Joseph encouraged him to do this more often because it was a good way to practice his reading. The first few days went by normally. Nothing interesting happened; the brothers just lived, ate, and slept as usual. 

Then Thursday came by. Collection day. The crime families would come about to collect the money from innocent and defenseless shop owners in exchange for protection. The irony of this was that they were usually paying for protection from the gangs who took the money; if you did not pay, they would blow up your shop and leave you with nothing. On this Thursday, a few henchmen from the Cambioso family came by to take their money as they usually did. Everyone was paying up except a little Italian restaurant owned by Grandma Rossi, who lived in the building with the brothers. She took care of them when they first arrived in the city and had been doing so ever since. So when the men were roughing up her shop and Joseph, who was outside at the time, saw them, he did what any reasonable person would do. He stepped in. He rushed to her shop and got into a fight with the men, grappling with them. There were two men. 

Daniel arrived soon enough to break up the fight and get his brother out of the way and back into the building, where Daniel scolded his brother, with the argument only escalating. 

“She was just standing there, Daniel” Joseph said, annoyed. 

“You’re supposed to leave her alone. You do not interfere with the mafia. You do not!” 

“What are they going to do? Kill us?”

“Yes. Yes, that is precisely what they are going to do. Do you not understand how these things work? They’re the law. They own everything. You don’t fuck with the landlords.” 

Joseph left the room angrily, throwing their little self made wardrobe on to the floor as he left. It wasn’t long until some men came by, 12 of them, knocking on their door. Daniel knew, but he let them in. 

Among them were the Boss, Don Franco Cambioso, and his son, Cambioso Junior. Junior had been around the mines a couple of times to take payments some of the mining guys owed to the mob, so Daniel had seen the relatively scrawny-looking boy around. But Franco? He was fat. His neck was fat. His wrists, fat. His face, fat. Standing in the middle of his men, he was like a stone covering the entrance of a tube. His voice was raspy and deep, and when he spoke, he sounded like a war general. 

“I hear you are the one that beat my men up?” Franco said 

“No sir. I have no idea what you are talking about.” 

“Your room is ugly. Are you implying I am lying about what happened?” “No sir. I am just saying I do not know what you’re talking about.” 

Two men hit Daniel on the head simultaneously, causing him to fall on his back. They kick him and beat him repeatedly until his face is cut and his mouth is full of blood. 

“Get him up,” Franco said. “You listen to me. You do not under any circumstance have the right to touch any of my men. Is that understood? I own this neighborhood. I own this street. I do what I want, when I want. That is the way this works.” 

“Maybe your men shouldn’t come running to you like some snivelling bastards” All of them hold up their guns pointing towards Daniel. 

“You really are a bunch of cowards, aren't you?” Franco said with genuine disgust on his face. “Listen here, boy: you owe us now, and what we want is simple. Now, my son here says you work in the mines, right?”

“Why would I tell you that?” 

“He does, father. ” Junior says, “Mine A.” 

“Okay then, listen. You’ll go into the mine. During the week, we hid some cash there for a reason. We need the cash. You’ll get us the cash and you’ll give it to my son, Junior. Now, if you don’t do what we ask, we’ll kill you. If you try to steal some of the money, we’ll kill you. If you try to run away, we’ll kill you.” 

“When do you want the money?” Daniel asked. 

“When do you return to work?” Junior asked back, only to receive a backhanded slap from his father. 

“You see this boy? He likes to talk when he is not supposed to talk. Monday. Get me my money. Junior will be at the exit.” 

They threw him to the ground and left his room. Joseph, who had heard the entire conversation by eavesdropping, came in immediately after they left. Joseph saw the look in his brother's eyes, one he did not see often. 

Fear. 

It was one thing to enter the mines with people, but on your own? That was a death sentence. Who was stupid enough to go inside the first time on their own? Joseph tried to convince his brother to let him help, but Daniel would not budge for days. Mine A was too dangerous; Joseph would not make it. His brother could not die on his watch. He could not. 

……………………………………………………………………………………………… 

The day came. The idea was to do this during the night shift, since there were fewer workers around at that time. He had met Junior the Saturday prior to plan at the Rossi Restaurant. Junior came in a black Cadillac without a driver, which was odd for the son of a Don. Why come alone?

“You smoke?” Junior asked, offering Daniel a cigarette. 

“No.” 

“It’s a risky thing what you’re doing,” Junior said to Daniel. 

“I mean it’s either that or I die, and I have mouths to feed.” 

“Feels like you still chose death to me. The inner-left section is basically you asking God to kill you. You’re asking to die.” 

“Why are you so concerned about whether or not I die?” 

“I could use someone like you. You have guts, you’re strong, you’re smart. You’re not like my dad’s men. They’re just a bunch of pussies. ” 

“Why are you telling me this?” 

Junior looks around him, then at Daniel. Using the tip of his fingers to hit the table. He stares into Daniel’s eyes. 

“I want to dethrone my father.” 

“What?” 

“I want to dethrone my father. I want to be Don.” 

“I do not want to, nor do I need to hear any of this. Are you trying to have me killed?” 

“Okay listen to me. I could use your help. You’re an outsider. If you killed him and I usurped him nobody would suspect a thing. Nobody knows you.” 

“What the fuck makes you think i can fucking kill a man! Are you out of your fucking mind?” 

“I’ll pay you the money in the bag. It’s 2.5 million dollars; you get it, you walk away, and we never have to see each other again. Look, I know you need the damn money.” 

“No I don't.”

“Yes, you fucking do. Do you know why and how I know where you work and what you and your brother's names are? Joseph is a degenerate gambler. He comes to our games every fucking Friday night. Do you know how much he owes us?” 

“You’re fucking lying.” 

“When you get home, ask him. Ask him. You think he’s in Mine B because of his lung issue? He’s there because we put him there, because they have little games in the mines.” 

Daniel is shocked. His eyes red and full of tears, his fists curled up in anger. He bangs the table furiously and runs out to the room where Joseph is. 

He opens the door furiously, holding up his brother and beating him up. 

“Fucking gambling?” he said, throwing his brother onto the ground. “Fucking gambling? Where the fuck did you even get the money from? And why, you fucking imbecile, why? Why would you ruin everything we have struggled so hard to come here and fight for? Why? You have a son back in Chicago with mother and siblings. You have people to take care of, you stupid fucking idiot. You fucking idiot. You’ve fucking ruined it.” 

Joseph lay on the floor, bawling. He did not have a reply. 

Monday could not have come faster. 

1am was the time they chose to execute the plan. There were enough workers around at that time for Daniel to feel safe, while being few enough for him to be able to take the money without fear of being caught. The inner-left of Mine A was a death pit. More men had died there than any coal produced. It was a pit within the tunnel which you could only enter by being dropped in with a wooden pulley, since it was too dangerous to climb into due to the lack of light, and you could only climb out with the ladder since the pulley wasn't strong enough to support the weight upwards.

Daniel made his way into the tunnel, his helmet torch the only source of light. It was dark, with the airflow basically non-existent the deeper he went into the tunnel. He finally took the inner-left, walked a few meters, and then met the pulley. It was barely tall, the wood was almost rotten, and its parts were almost completely destroyed. He knew he wasn't coming to do much digging because, according to Junior, the previous person didn't dig too deep. 

He sat on the stoney ground, beside the pulley looking into the pit he was about to enter. His eyes were lost in what looked like an almost bottomless pit. 

2.5 million. 

It was more than enough of what they needed. He and Joseph could run, couldn't they? Run back to Chicago. Run back to his son, Jamal. Joseph to his adopted boy, Kenneth. They never seemed to get along, the boys. Kenneth was so obviously the odd cookie all the time: a white baby with a black family. Kenneth was the son of Daniel’s girlfriend who died from crack overdose. Her death was the wake-up call for the brothers. And yet, it felt like they were back in Chicago again. Back messing with the wrong people, back doing things they wouldn’t want to do. 

Backwards. They had gone backwards. 

Daniel got himself up, took the rope of the pulley and tied it to the makeshift harness, and slowly let himself down using the ladder, since he had nobody to let him down. He took each step one at a time. It was a long ladder and one slip could cost him his life. Some of the steps were barely intact, with most completely broken off, so he often had to jump and then grab hold of the ladder again. This went on for about 5 minutes until he got to the near bottom of the ladder, where he figured would be a good place to jump to the ground. So he did. Daniel jumped and landed awkwardly on his knee, bending his right knee inwards. 

He screamed in agony, so loud in fact that any miner nearby would have heard him. But there wasn't one around. And so he screamed and screamed, gasping for air and saying, “No. No,” when he realized he could barely even move the leg. Was this how he was going to die? He sat up in the small pit with his left leg,

which he could barely feel, curled and his right leg left straight. He had his pickaxe with him. The pulley didn't break and the rope was still around his waist. So he reached behind his back, took his axe, squeezed himself in the pit, and began to dig. In thirty minutes, both his arms were sore because he needed to keep shifting positions, and hence the digging hand, due to the size of the hole. But at last, he found it: in a black bag. Freedom. 

All he had to do now was get out. And so he did. He untied the rope from the harness, held onto it, and used it as well as the sides of the ladder to pull himself upwards until he got to the top, then dragged himself on the ground using the stones as a way to push himself faster across the ground. He ate dust, his overalls became dirtier than usual, and worst of all, he could barely breathe. But he dragged himself through to the exit, which was closer to the inner-left than through the main tracks. 

At the exit sat Junior on the hood of his car with a cigarette in his mouth, engulfed by red neons around the mines. The entire parking lot was. He wasn’t paying attention to the exit; in fact, Daniel had taken so long to get to him that he was about to presume he ran away or had died. And then he came. 

Junior got off his trunk and watched in awe of the man. Because if you were to be looking in, you would see a man in his late thirties, crawling and grunting and pushing himself on the ground just to move, under the red night of the city. 

His clothes were dirty and soaked in the mud from the mines. He had cuts all over his body. Junior ran to help him up after Daniel signaled his knee was basically totaled. 

“Are you okay?”, Junior asked. 

“I have your fucking money. My brother and I are now out of your debt. We owe you nothing.” 

“Do you need a doctor?” 

“What I need is for you to leave me the fuck alone. I need to get to a payphone to call Joseph.” 

“Your brother, right.”

Junior sat on the floor, back leaning against his car to reach Daniel’s level. Daniel pulled himself up to sit beside Junior. 

“Your brother…your brother owed us a lot of money. His vig kept adding up every week.” 

“What are you saying?” 

“This job was originally meant for your brother, but he refused to take it. If he had done it, his debt would have been forgiven. But he didn’t. So his debt went up again. Before I came here, he was at our place where we host our card games, trying to make the money he owed.” 

“How much does he owe?” 

“250,000. He borrowed more money from our people to join this game. It was high stakes, high buy-ins, and I guess he thought he would win like every other gambler, but he didn’t. Your brother took the gun of one of our men and shot himself in the head.” 

Daniel stared into Junior's eyes; he wasn’t joking. And slowly, his large baggy eyes started to redden, filling with tears. Uncontrollable tears. He cried for about 6 minutes straight and then went dead silent, staring down at the ground. Thinking about their childhood, their dreams. That was his brother. That was his family. 

He turned to face Junior, let out a deep breath, and stretched his arm out. “Give me a cigarette. ” he said to Junior. 

“Sure.” Junior replied, handing him one and lighting it for him. 

“This is what is gonna happen. I’m gonna help you with your little coup. I want 3 million dollars, cash. I don't care where you get it from. But I want it set up through some kind of fund, so talk to your money movers. That’s the most important condition. That is the way this will work. Can you do that?” 

Junior sat up, eyes filled with gratitude and confusion but lit up nonetheless.

“Deal. We have something similar to the fund currently, we have money in Romix. We can add you.” 

“Fuck no. I want nothing to do with you and your family after this. I want my own fund. Separate fucking entity,” he said, puffing on the cigarette which was calming him. 

“Okay deal. 6 months from now.” Junior said, stretching his hand towards Daniel “Deal.” Daniel said, shaking him back. 

Daniel returned to his room with help from Junior, who drove him home. Daniel’s left leg had healed by this time, but his right was still basically dead, so he climbed the steps to his room on his own. He refused help from Junior, taking the 2.5 million Junior gave him as a down payment and, quite frankly, a token of trust. The plan was to tell Franco that Daniel had run away with the money so the kill became even less suspicious. 

He walked towards their window and sat, staring at the sunrise with a new cigarette in his mouth. There was something different about it today. Something new. He shed a tear watching the sun come up on a new day, a new dawn and a new life.

ALSO BY AUTHOR